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Special to USAfrica The Newspaper, Houston
USAfricaonline.com and NigeriaCentral.com

Time Wise
By CHIKA UNIGWE

 At our local mothers' group meeting last week, I met a woman, Sarah, who was mourning her mother who had recently passed away. She was very upset because her mother had spent the last five weeks of her life at a retirement home. She regretted the fact that her mother's last weeks on earth were lonely ones. She had been too caught up with work and her demanding family to visit her. She had planned a visit for sometime in the spring when she would have more time on her hands, and the children would be away at spring camps. Unfortunately, her plans never materialized.

We are so often caught up in the humdrum of our lives to make time for the things that really matter to us. We compensate for our emotional shortcomings, materially. To cut back on the time we ought to spend reading with our children, my husband and I invested in electronic talking books and a computer for them. The house is over-run by toys that squeak, that walk, that talk. We have practically given the rearing of our children over to Fisher-Price. Sadly, these tended to salvage our guilty consciences. Any time to spare was ours: our "couple without children" time.

When I call my soon-to-be three year old, he more often than not answers me with a "in a minute, I'm busy". Those are the exact words I tell him, most of the time, when he asks if I can play with him. Recently, I have tried to cut the regularity with which I tell him that.

I came home from that meeting last week determined to re-prioritize my life. I kept hearing Sarah's anguished lamentation on all the things she should have done with her mother but would never have a chance to do. Her mother liked to be read to and had asked her to come over whenever she could spare the time to read to her. Sarah never did She swore she would die regretting it. I hope I never have to live with a regret that deep.

A wise woman once told me that we are never so pressed for time that we cannot make out time for the things that matter to us. Those are indeed words to live by.
Unigwe, an alumnus of the University of Nigeria, Nsukka; KU Leuven and UC Louvain in Belgium, is the Canada-based contributing editor and columnist USAfricaonline.com and USAfrica The Newspaper. She is the author of 'Teardrops', a collection of poems, and her short story, 'Touched by an Angel', was broadcast on the BBC World Service.

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